1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to, for example, a liquid ejecting apparatus such as an ink jet-type printer, and a wiping method in the liquid ejecting apparatus.
2. Related Art
In general, as one type of a liquid ejecting apparatus, an ink jet-type printer in which printing is performed by ejecting ink (liquid) from a nozzle having an opening formed on a nozzle forming surface of a liquid ejecting head (a liquid ejecting unit) onto a recording medium such as paper is known. In such a printer, in order to maintain ejection properties of the ink from the liquid ejecting head, a head maintenance apparatus is generally provided.
Such a head maintenance apparatus is provided with various functions. For example, a function in which a nozzle forming surface of a liquid ejecting head is capped by a suction cap, and thickened ink is sucked from a nozzle by a suction pump, thereby allowing the ejection properties of the ink from the nozzle to be recovered is provided. In addition, a function in which unnecessary ink adhered to the nozzle forming surface of the liquid ejecting head is swept away (wiped away) by a wiper is provided.
Among these functions, the function of sweeping away the ink by the wiper is performed by the head maintenance apparatus. Furthermore, as a printer which is provided with a head maintenance apparatus having a function of sweeping away ink by a wiper, a printer of the related art as disclosed in JP-A-2007-152940 is known.
In such a printer, a head main body (a liquid ejecting head) is supported by a holder, and a wiper is moved in a wiping direction while coming in contact with an ink discharge surface (a nozzle forming surface) of the head main body, thereby allowing ink adhered to the ink discharge surface to be captured and swept away by the wiper.
Meanwhile, in the printer as described above, a vertical position of the wiper is generally set such that an interference amount of the wiper with respect to the ink discharge surface is an interference amount which is suitable for sweeping the ink discharge surface. Furthermore, when the wiper is moved in the wiping direction in order to sweep away the ink adhered to the ink discharge surface by the wiper, first, the wiper comes in contact with the holder for supporting the head main body, and thus is stroked by the corner portion of the holder, and the wiper is moved to a corner portion of the head main body while being bent in a direction which is inverse to the wiping direction, and then the wiper is further moved to the ink discharge surface while being stroked by the corner portion of the head main body. For this reason, the wiper is stroked by the corner portion of the holder or the corner portion of the head main body, so that a problem in which the ink adhered to the wiper is adhered to a side surface of the holder or the head main body occurs.
Furthermore, these problems are not limited to an ink jet-type printer but are substantially common to liquid ejecting apparatuses provided with a wiper for sweeping away liquid adhered to a nozzle forming surface of a liquid ejecting head.